In the first part of our hotel website redesign series, we discussed the importance of backing up and recording all the features of your old website. Now comes the all-too-important and often neglected part — planning!

Think of it this way: A hotel website redesign is like the remodeling your home kitchen. You wouldn’t want to start ripping up flooring and tearing down cabinets without a clear vision of what you want your new kitchen to be, right? Of course not! You would start with a plan for demolishing your old kitchen with as little inconvenience as possible and have set ideas in mind for your soon-to-be remodeled kitchen.

Planning Your Hotel Website Redesign

Like remodeling your kitchen, planning your hotel website redesign will make for a successful transition to your updated website. Preparation is the key. You will need to ensure you have enough resources, clearly define problems and make decisions.

Your plan should consider email accounts or server changes, eliminating duplicate content, URL structure, 301 Redirects, giving a once-over for missing titles, and using multiple browsers to check your site to name a few. Oh – and let’s not forget having a good SEO strategy! A good plan will become the blueprint that will help make the most out of your new online presence without losing the value found within your current site.

Of course the best of plans will have one or two kinks to iron out so make sure your plan includes putting your old site back up while you fix the issues. You also wouldn’t want search engines to find your site while you’re in the middle of development. So protect your site by working on it locally and use a password to keep anyone from catching wind of what you are planning.

Also, you will have to take into account time, budget and functionality in your hotel website redesign but you will first need to consider: Who is your target audience, what you are looking to accomplish and where it would be best to make the changes. After all, you will want to get the most efficient, cost effective results and reap the most benefits in creating online opportunities, improving conversions and increasing rankings in search engine.